Outgoing New York City Mayor Eric Adams used his visit to Israel to deliver one of his bluntest warnings yet about incoming socialist Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, declaring, “If I were a Jewish New Yorker I would be concerned about my children,” and insisting, “Everything is not fine” for the city’s Jews as antisemitism surges and a new administration prepares to take power.
Adams arrived in Israel on Friday for his final trip as mayor, meeting with business and political leaders and visiting sites tied to the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre. On Sunday, the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) hosted an event in Tel Aviv honoring him for his support of Israel and his efforts to confront rising antisemitism — an event that quickly shifted into a stark warning about New York’s future under Mamdani.
Asked about Jewish safety once Mamdani takes office January 1, Adams did not hedge. “We need to be honest about the moment and cannot sugarcoat it,” he said. “The New York Jewish community must prepare themselves. This is a period where you need to be conscious about the level of global hostility towards the Jewish community. If I were a Jewish New Yorker, I would be concerned about my children.”
Pressed again, Adams was even more direct: “Everything is not fine. If you say everything is fine, you are setting yourself up for failure.”
The outgoing mayor described an alarming cultural shift in which antisemitism is now socially rewarded. “It is now cool and hip to be antisemitic,” Adams said, recounting an encounter with a teenager in Brownsville who called him a Zionist and demanded Israel’s destruction despite being unable to locate the country on a map — a worldview absorbed entirely through social media.
“They hijacked our young people,” Adams warned. “Their plan was well executed. Now we need a professional plan to fight back.”
He said the same trend is accelerating across college campuses, public schools, and online platforms. Adams pointed to protesters “walking around the country with signs saying ‘Queers for Palestine,’” calling it “queer when the only place you can walk around in the Middle East being queer is Israel. They’ve hijacked the conversation.”
Adams also argued that the core of the anti-Israel campaign has never been about land or sovereignty. “The ‘Free Palestine Movement’ was never about land,” he said. “It was, and is, about the destruction and eradication of Jewish people.”
He then drew a comparison to his own community: “If this were happening to the African-American community, you would not be silent. So why are others silent now?”
Adams reserved some of his sharpest language for what he called the messaging collapse following Hamas’s October 7 massacre, arguing that Israel’s supporters failed to counter opponents who flooded the public sphere with emotionally charged images from Gaza. He said that figures he described as “the Zohrans of the world” helped drive that narrative, turning the imagery into a rallying point for anger against Israel.
Adams has previously called Mamdani’s victory “abnormal” and evidence that “people are comfortable with being antisemitic.” During the campaign, Mamdani repeatedly refused to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada” as antisemitic, only reversing himself after sustained backlash — even as he continued to deny Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and framed himself as a champion of the “Free Palestine” movement.
Mamdani has faced criticism for years over his affiliations and positions. He co-founded a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter in college, has backed the BDS campaign since 2014, pledged not to visit Israel as mayor, and said he would “exhaust every legal option” to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York City — citing International Criminal Court warrants the U.S. does not recognize.
As Breitbart News reported, veteran Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf warned that Mamdani’s victory would mark “the end of Jewish New York as we know it,” predicting that Jews who can leave the city will. He charged that the Democratic Socialists of America seized “the carcass” of the Democratic Party to advance a hard-left agenda.
In a separate exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Mosab Hassan Yousef — the “Son of Hamas” — warned that Mamdani is functioning as a “Trojan horse” for a “Red-Green Alliance” uniting radical leftist and Islamist forces.
The Ohio director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) echoed that sentiment, calling Mamdani’s win a “referendum” on Palestinian “resistance” and a blow to the Democratic establishment.
Public anxiety among Jewish residents is rising. The New York Post reported that Jewish New Yorkers are now rushing to purchase firearms for self-defense in the wake of Mamdani’s victory — a dramatic shift in a city where many Jews traditionally relied on police protection rather than personal weapons.
The mayor’s warning comes amid a documented surge in antisemitic incidents. The Anti-Defamation League reported a 227 percent increase in antisemitic cases nationwide from 2021 to 2023. New York City — home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel — recorded nearly 1,000 incidents in 2024 alone, the highest of any U.S. city since tracking began.
At Sunday’s event, CAM CEO Sacha Roytman Dratwa praised Adams for concrete action during his term, including adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, creating the city’s first office dedicated to confronting antisemitism, establishing a Jewish advisory council, and launching the New York City–Israel Economic Council.
Two years after his fiery “We Are Not Alright” speech following the October 7 attacks, Adams told the Tel Aviv audience the situation has worsened. “No, we’re not all right,” he said. “We’re far from it. We’re going in the wrong direction.”
In Jerusalem, Adams met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and said he wanted Israelis to understand that 49 percent of New Yorkers “did not buy into the rhetoric of hatred towards Israel,” citing election results to emphasize that the city has not turned against the Jewish state.
Adams also met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the visit. Netanyahu recently warned that if Mamdani represents New York’s future, “I think New York has a very dim future.”
As Adams told the Tel Aviv audience, Jewish New Yorkers “must prepare themselves,” because pretending “everything is fine” under the incoming Mamdani administration is “setting yourself up for failure.”
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
